A post on The Verge follows up on recent comments by Valve's Gabe Newell about the possibility of Steam hardware by saying this is exactly what Valve is working on, and a reveal may come as early as next week at San Francisco's Game Developer's Conference (thanks Kotaku).

The article cites unnamed "sources" who say Valve is working with various hardware vendors on a "Steam Box," which sounds more exotic than "Windows PC," which is what this seems like, as word is: "Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up." They note a couple of possibilities that may make this more distinctive than a hardware specification, speculating it may include a proprietary controller, a biometric feedback device, and could take better advantage of Steam's "big picture mode."

This all still speculation at this point, as Valve has not responded to their request for comment.

Curious; Steam on a console is actually a viable idea given the nature of the service. If Microsoft can make Windows 8 work well with existing games, it might be an interesting alternative to an XBox 720.

The most attractive thing I can think of however is that if the competing services statement is correct, indie developers might be able to make their games available without having to program for an entirely different platform. All that would be necessary is a competing service that doesn't try to have everything Steam has, but instead offers all the other small games that would otherwise only be known to dedicated PC gamers.